DOCSLIB.ORG

Introduction

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Introduction Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information Introduction Those familiar with the works of Agnolo Bronzino generally think either of his austere portraits or the famous Allegory of Venus (see Fig. 18), paintings that have long captivated viewers. A haunting passage from Henry James's The Wings of the Dove (1902) beautifully captures the fascination of Bronzino's paintings. In the novel James's heroine, Milly Theale, looks at Bronzino's Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi (Fig. 1). Milly, an American heiress, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lucrezia, tearfully gazes long at this "mysterious," "strange," "fair," and "won• derful" image. Milly sees: the face of a young woman, all magnificently drawn, down to the hands, and magnificently dressed; a face almost livid in hue, yet handsome in sadness and crowned with a mass of hair rolled back and high, that must, before fading with time, have had a family resemblance to her own. The lady in question, at all events, with her slightly Michelangelesque squareness, her eyes of other days, her full lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her brocaded and wasted reds, was a very great personage — only unaccompanied by a joy. And she was dead, dead, dead.1 Like the allusions to other works of art in James's fiction, this descrip• tion provides more than an ornamental backdrop.2 The painting func• tions in many ways. It prompts a meditation that accompanies Milly's guileless conquest of English society at a great country house. Little about Milly aside from superficial particulars — her prodigious fortune, beauty, and charm — is known at this point, and her response to the painting serves to augur many truths. On the most immediate level, the i © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information BRONZINO i. Bronzino, Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi, c 1540, Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Courtesy Alinari/Art Resource, New York. stunning portrait mirrors Milly's own brilliant surface. The passage also portends, through the incantatory repetition of "dead, dead, dead," what has yet to be revealed, namely, Milly's awareness of her own mortality. Finally, her profound reaction to this portrait of a "very 2 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information INTRODUCTION great personage/' who is at once "sad" and "magnificent," hints at unexpected depths in Milly's character. James's richly nuanced description of Lucrezia Panciatichi's noble features and elaborate dress coincided with a renewed appreciation of Bronzino's art at the turn of the century.3 James also hints at subtleties in Bronzino's art left unnoticed by earlier critics. He detects a tension in the portrait: while he admires the gorgeous surface — the sub• ject's magnificent dress, jewels, and beautifully coifed hair — he also registers her deathly pallor and sad expression. This disparity between a ravishing outward splendor and an unknowable inner sorrow makes for a decided ambiguity. It is perhaps Bronzino's uncanny ability to render such elusive figures that entrances modern viewers. James's observation of a certain tension in the portrait also coincides well with post-Freudian sensibilities attuned to the working of the unconscious — to that which resists knowledge and is perhaps un• knowable. Subsequent characterizations of Bronzino's art echo some of James's observations. Numerous art historians, for example, have praised the elegance of Bronzino's figures and his painstaking rendering of surface details. Others have commented on the sculptural forms of his figures. Scholars also emphasize qualities not mentioned by James; they concen• trate more on the effect of the portraits. Many critics find the paintings harsh and astringent. Expressions such as "cold," "hard," "inaccessible," "severe," "contained," "glacial," "melancholy reserve," "marmoreal sur• faces," "impossibly remote," "inexpressibly chilling," and "frozen stat• uesque poses" pepper descriptions of Bronzino's art. Notwithstanding their different objectives, both scholars and writers find the subjects' expressions largely indecipherable. Bronzino's most well-known works are famously resistant to interpretation. As many art historians have observed, his tautly set figures resemble still lives; their faces have the impenetrability of masks.4 Characterizations of two other major Renaissance portraitists, Titian and Raphael, differ substantially. Art historians typically praise Titian's abilities to capture the quintessence of a figure, noting, for example, that each of his portraits constitutes a "unique experience." In his discussion of Titian's Pietro Aretino (Fig. 2), one distinguished art his• torian observes that the painting is perhaps "too truthful" in its frank representation of the writer's considerable girth, pugnaciousness, alert 3 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information BRONZINO 2. Titian, Portrait of Pietro Arttino, c. 1545, Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Photo: Courtesy Alinari/Art Resource, New York. eyes, and caustic mouth.5 Titian's Portrait of a Bearded Man (Fig. 3), sometimes considered a portrait of Ludovico Ariosto, elicits similar comments. As a critic declares, the painting presents "a face of the utmost composure and dignity, fully capable of holding its own against the blinding beauty of the sleeve."6 The painting provides a stunning emanation of the subject's inner nature. In a similar vein, critics single out for praise the manner in which Raphael, in a way no less extraor• dinary than Titian, conveys the essence of his subjects. Raphael's Baldassare Castiglione (Fig. 4) incarnates the "cool composure" and "inner calm" of the ideal courtier, just as his Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de} Medici and Luigi de Rossi (Fig. 5) provides a "searching analysis" of the corpulent, luxury-loving Medici pope seated at a table bearing precious objects.7 Looking at such expressive portraits as these, one readily accedes to the claims of contemporary poets who praise Titian's and 4 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information INTRODUCTION 3. Titian, Portrait of a Bearded Man, c. 1510—1515, National Gallery, London. Photo: Courtesy Alinari/Art Resource, New York. Raphael's abilities to render both the physical and the psychological identities of their subjects. The austerity of Bronzino's portraits, in contrast, permits no such penetration into a sitter's inner being. Indeed one might go so far as to observe that Bronzino places himself against this tradition of revelation, preferring to present viewers with visual conundrums — seemingly petrified figures with detached, evacuated expressions that betray nothing about themselves. Of course, some figures are less know- able than others. Some of Bronzino's subjects are true mysteries: we simply do not know the identities of the figures in works such as the Portrait of a Young Man (see Fig. 28) or the Youth with a Lute in Florence's Uffizi Gallery. Ignorant of the biographical particu• lars that might accord these individuals meaning, we cannot "read" 5 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information BRONZINO 4. Raphael, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, c. 1515, The Louvre, Paris. Photo: Courtesy Giraudon /Art Resource, New York. such subjects, and our observations concerning these works must be confined largely to comments on what the subjects' dress or pose, or the objects surrounding the figures, might connote. Yet even those figures whose identities are known do not lend themselves easily to interpretation. Perhaps no painting more encapsulates the inaccessibility of Bronzino's portraits than does the famous Portrait of Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Giovanni (Fig. 6). Like many of Bronzino's portraits, this work presents us with a full disclosure of the sitters' outer realities but no hint of their inner qualities. Whereas the duchess's dress is rendered with an almost photographic realism, her impassive face reveals nothing beyond her exterior countenance. The dress, almost phantasmagorical in its effects due to the extravagant arabesque pattern, dominates the picture. We are encouraged to read the garment itself as Eleonora, as an ostentatious symbol of her power and station.8 Bronzino's art is 6 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information INTRODUCTION 5. Raphael, Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de Medici and Luigi de Rossi, c. 1517. Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Courtesy Alinari/Art Resource, New York. unusually impersonal, his figures exceptionally reserved. Both the artist and his work are elusive. Much of Bronzino's elusiveness as an artist derives from the sketch- iness of his biography. There is a certain impenetrability to his life. The few facts we possess about
Load more

Recommended publications
  • March 27, 2018 RESTORATION of CAPPONI CHAPEL in CHURCH of SANTA FELICITA in FLORENCE, ITALY, COMPLETED THANKS to SUPPORT FROM
    Media Contact: For additional information, Libby Mark or Heather Meltzer at Bow Bridge Communications, LLC, New York City; +1 347-460-5566; info@bow-bridge.com. March 27, 2018 RESTORATION OF CAPPONI CHAPEL IN CHURCH OF SANTA FELICITA IN FLORENCE, ITALY, COMPLETED THANKS TO SUPPORT FROM FRIENDS OF FLORENCE Yearlong project celebrated with the reopening of the Renaissance architectural masterpiece on March 28, 2018: press conference 10:30 am and public event 6:00 pm Washington, DC....Friends of Florence celebrates the completion of a comprehensive restoration of the Capponi Chapel in the 16th-century church Santa Felicita on March 28, 2018. The restoration project, initiated in March 2017, included all the artworks and decorative elements in the Chapel, including Jacopo Pontormo's majestic altarpiece, a large-scale painting depicting the Deposition from the Cross (1525‒28). Enabled by a major donation to Friends of Florence from Kathe and John Dyson of New York, the project was approved by the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio di Firenze, Pistoia, e Prato, entrusted to the restorer Daniele Rossi, and monitored by Daniele Rapino, the Pontormo’s Deposition after restoration. Soprintendenza officer responsible for the Santo Spirito neighborhood. The Capponi Chapel was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi for the Barbadori family around 1422. Lodovico di Gino Capponi, a nobleman and wealthy banker, purchased the chapel in 1525 to serve as his family’s mausoleum. In 1526, Capponi commissioned Capponi Chapel, Church of St. Felicita Pontormo to decorate it. Pontormo is considered one of the most before restoration. innovative and original figures of the first half of the 16th century and the Chapel one of his greatest masterpieces.
    [Show full text]
  • The Strange Art of 16Th –Century Italy
    The Strange Art of 16th –century Italy Some thoughts before we start. This course is going to use a seminar format. Each of you will be responsible for an artist. You will be giving reports on- site as we progress, in as close to chronological order as logistics permit. At the end of the course each of you will do a Power Point presentation which will cover the works you treated on-site by fitting them into the rest of the artist’s oeuvre and the historical context.. The readings: You will take home a Frederick Hartt textbook, History of Italian Renaissance Art. For the first part of the course this will be your main background source. For sculpture you will have photocopies of some chapters from Roberta Olsen’s book on Italian Renaissance sculpture. I had you buy Walter Friedlaender’s Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting, first published in 1925. While recent scholarship does not agree with his whole thesis, many of his observations are still valid about the main changes at the beginning and the end of the 16th century. In addition there will be some articles copied from art history periodicals and a few provided in digital format which you can read on the computer. Each of you will be doing other reading on your individual artists. A major goal of the course will be to see how sixteenth-century art depends on Raphael and Michelangelo, and to a lesser extent on Leonardo. Art seems to develop in cycles. What happens after a moment of great innovations? Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists, seems to ask “where do we go from here?” If Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo were perfect, how does one carry on? The same thing occurred after Giotto and Duccio in the early Trecento.
    [Show full text]
  • The Decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora Di Toledo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Flor
    PREFACE The decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Flor- ence, is a masterpiece of the art of Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572), painter to the Medici court in Florence in the sixteenth century. Indeed, as the only com- plex ensemble of frescoes and panels he painted, it could be deemed the central work of his career. It is also a primary monument of the religious painting of cinquecento Florence. Just as Bronzino's splendid portraits and erotic allegories established new modes of secular painting that expressed the ideals of mid- sixteenth-century court life, so his innovative chapel paintings transformed tradi- tional biblical narratives and devotional themes according to a new aesthetic. The chapel is also the locus of the emerging personal imagery of its patron, Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (1519-1574), and its decorations adumbrate many of the metaphors of rule, as they have been called, that would be programmatically developed in his more overtly propagandistic later art. There has been no comprehensive, documented, and illustrated study of this central work of Florentine Renaissance art. It was the subject of a short article by Andrea Emiliani (1961) and of my own essays, one on Bronzino's preparatory studies for the decoration (1971) and two others on individual paintings in the chapel (1987, 1989). These were prolegomena to this full-scale study, in which the recently restored frescoes are also illustrated for the first time. X X V 11 I began this book in 1986 at the Getty Center for Art History and the Human- ities, whose staff and director, Kurt W.
    [Show full text]
  • Information to Users
    INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy subm itted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6’ x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOTE TO USERS Copyrighted materials in this document have not been filmed at the request of the author. They are available for consultation at the author’s university library.
    [Show full text]
  • Pontormo: Painting in an Age of Anxiety A I C  
    Pontormo: Miraculous Encounters, on view at the Getty Museum from February , to April , , brings together a small number of exceptional works by Jacopo da Pontormo, one of the greatest PAID UCLA Italian artists of the sixteenth century. The exhibition features one PRESORTED FIRST CLASS U.S. POSTAGE U.S. Pontormo of his most moving and innovative altarpieces, the Visitation, an Painting in an Age of Anxiety unprecedented loan from the parish Church of Santi Michele e Francesco in Carmignano (Prato, Italy), alongside the Getty’s own, iconic Portrait of a Halberdier, and the recently rediscovered Portrait of aYoung Man in a Red Cap from a private collection. These paintings have been reunited with their only surviving preparatory studies and other related drawings, in order to clarify Pontormo’s creative processes and working methods. This international conference, organized by the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the J. Paul Getty Museum, along with the curators of the exhibition, brings together leading scholars currently working on Pontormo’s oeuvre. Both historians and conservators will present new research related to the main themes of the exhibition, including: the works of Pontormo’s maturity, executed between and , within the historical context of the last Florentine republic and the dramatic siege of Florence; the artist’s techniques in drawing and painting; the controversial identifi cation of the sitters of his portraits; the relationship between Pontormo and his most important student, Bronzino; broader questions of attribution and connoisseurship. In addition to formal presentations made by the speakers, conference participants will also study the works present in the exhibition directly in the gallery to foster debate and discussion.
    [Show full text]
  • Filippino Lippi and Music
    Filippino Lippi and Music Timothy J. McGee Trent University Un examen attentif des illustrations musicales dans deux tableaux de Filippino Lippi nous fait mieux comprendre les intentions du peintre. Dans le « Portrait d’un musicien », l’instrument tenu entre les mains du personnage, tout comme ceux représentés dans l’arrière-plan, renseigne au sujet du type de musique à être interprétée, et contribue ainsi à expliquer la présence de la citation de Pétrarque dans le tableau. Dans la « Madone et l’enfant avec les anges », la découverte d’une citation musicale sur le rouleau tenu par les anges musiciens suggère le propos du tableau. n addition to their value as art, paintings can also be an excellent source of in- Iformation about people, events, and customs of the past. They can supply clear details about matters that are known only vaguely from written accounts, or in some cases, otherwise not known at all. For the field of music history, paintings can be informative about a number of social practices surrounding the performance of music, such as where performances took place, who attended, who performed, and what were the usual combinations of voices and instruments—the kind of detail that is important for an understanding of the place of music in a society, but that is rarely mentioned in the written accounts. Paintings are a valuable source of information concerning details such as shape, exact number of strings, performing posture, and the like, especially when the painter was knowledgeable about instruments and performance practices,
    [Show full text]
  • Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects
    Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects Giorgio Vasari Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects Table of Contents Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects.......................................................................1 Giorgio Vasari..........................................................................................................................................2 LIFE OF FILIPPO LIPPI, CALLED FILIPPINO...................................................................................9 BERNARDINO PINTURICCHIO........................................................................................................13 LIFE OF BERNARDINO PINTURICCHIO.........................................................................................14 FRANCESCO FRANCIA.....................................................................................................................17 LIFE OF FRANCESCO FRANCIA......................................................................................................18 PIETRO PERUGINO............................................................................................................................22 LIFE OF PIETRO PERUGINO.............................................................................................................23 VITTORE SCARPACCIA (CARPACCIO), AND OTHER VENETIAN AND LOMBARD PAINTERS...........................................................................................................................................31
    [Show full text]
  • JOURNAL of the FRIENDS of the UFFIZI GALLERY No
    Free publication on www.friendsoftheuffizigallery.org Polistampa - Firenze JOURNAL OF THE FRIENDS OF THE UFFIZI GALLERY No. 76 - December 2019 Homage to the Greatest In the words of 1483–1520, these are the Raphael walking through the Venetian order that through chronological boundaries of poetically entitled palace cham- perspective unveils the visible Antonio Paolucci, the Raphael’s existence. His earli- bers (the Throne Room, Jole’s truth. phases of the brief but est period was spent in Urbino Room, the Sweet Orange Room, The foundations of Rapha- intense life of Raphael. el’s training are Urbino and the artistic and literary culture The fleeting years of his of the court of the Montefel- glorious youth, filled with tro. Urbino taught the son of masterpieces Giovanni Santi two fundamen- tal concepts. First, the omni- presence and pervasiveness of aphael died on April 6, beauty found everywhere and R1520, shortly after his within everything. Still today, thirty-seventh birthday, having few other places in Italy give as come down some days earlier clear a demonstration of this with an “acute and continuous concept as the city of the Mon- fever”, probably malaria, en- tefeltro. Urbino taught the boy, demic and often fatal in Rome heir to his father’s workshop at the time. His funeral was held and trade, that beauty must be in the Pantheon. All Rome was modulated and represented present and all Rome cried – following a codified selection, as Vasari tells us – also because within protocols that find their the Transfiguration, today in the origins and justification within Vatican Pinacoteca, was placed the Court itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Pontormo's Capponi Chapel* Leosteinberg
    385 Pontormo's Capponi Chapel* LeoSteinberg Pontormo's work in the Capponi Chapel in Santa Felicita, as "Christ is taken away from His Mother, towards the Florence, began in I525 with the decoration of its hemis- tomb... the Virgin's gesture... becomes one of farewell." pherical dome, a fresco of God the Father surrounded by Meanwhile, on the vault surface directly opposite, the figure four patriarchs. The fresco was followed by four circular of God the Father (known to us from the Uffizi drawings, panels for the pendentives with bust portraits of the evan- Figs. 4-5) extends his right hand in "a gesture of sublime gelists, partly Bronzino's work,1 and by the great altar- compassion and benediction directed across the Chapel to the piece, variously called Descentfrom the Cross (or Deposition), dead Christ." "The fusion by gesture and emotion of dome Pietd, or Entombment (Fig. I).2 The final work, datable in and altarpiece has the effect that the subject-matter of the 1528, was the fresco of the Annunciationon the window wall. parts also becomes one, and that an action takes place across This last, the four tondi, and the altarpiece in its rich the space of the chapel."6 period frame are intact. The cupola decoration was lost In what follows, I will have to quarrel with almost every when the original dome was destroyed to make way for the detail of Shearman's analysis. But my disagreements, in- present shallower vault; nor do we know whether this oc- stead of invalidating, will, I believe, confirm his essential curred in the sixteenth or the eighteenth century.3 In fact, intuition.
    [Show full text]
  • The Evolution of the Medici Portrait: from Business to Politics
    THE EVOLUTION OF THE MEDICI PORTRAIT: FROM BUSINESS TO POLITICS A Thesis Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences of John Carroll University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts By Mark J. Danford Spring, 2013 This thesis of Mark Danford is hereby accepted ________________________________________ ____________________ Reader – Dr. Edward Olszewski Date ________________________________________ ____________________ Reader – Dr. Brenda Wirkus Date ________________________________________ ____________________ Advisor – Dr. Linda Koch Date I certify that this is the original document ________________________________________ ____________________ Author – Mark J. Danford Date Acknowledgements There are many people I would like to thank for their encouragement and support during my graduate studies. I would like to thank the following people at John Carroll University: Dr. William Francis Ryan for introducing me to the Humanities Program; Dr. Brenda Wirkus for advising me and working with my hectic schedule so that I could complete my studies; and Dr. Linda Koch for providing me with an excellent foundation in the field of Art History as well as taking the extra time out of her schedule in order to be my thesis advisor. I would also like to thank Dr. Edward Olszewski from Case Western Reserve University for agreeing to be an additional reader of my thesis and offering his expertise concerning Florence and the Medici. I would like to thank the following people for making my research a little easier and offering me access to the curatorial files in their respective institutions: Andrea Mall from Registration at the Toledo Museum of Art; Anne Halpern from the Department of Curatorial Records at the National Gallery of Art; and Jennifer Vanim from the department of European Painting & Sculpture before 1900 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
    [Show full text]
  • Predella Journal of Visual Arts, N°37, 2016 - Miscellanea / Miscellany / Predella.Cfs.Unipi.It
    Predella journal of visual arts, n°37, 2016 - Miscellanea / Miscellany www.predella.it / predella.cfs.unipi.it Direzione scientifica e proprietà / Scholarly Editors-in-Chief and owners: Gerardo de Simone, Emanuele Pellegrini - predella@predella.it Predella pubblica ogni anno due numeri online e due numeri monografici a stampa / Predella publishes two online issues and two monographic print issues each year Tutti gli articoli sono sottoposti alla peer-review anonima / All articles are subject to anonymous peer-review Comitato scientifico / Editorial Advisory Board: Diane Bodart, Maria Luisa Catoni, Michele Dantini, Annamaria Ducci, Fabio Marcelli, Linda Pisani, Riccardo Venturi Cura redazionale e impaginazione / Editing & Layout: Paolo di Simone (con la collaborazione di / with the collaboration of: Nikhil Das, Giulia Del Francia) Predella journal of visual arts - ISSN 1827-8655 pubblicato nel mese di Settembre 2016 / published in the month of September 2016 Eliana Carrara Agnolo Bronzino: The Muse of Florence Review of Agnolo Bronzino: The Muse of Florence, edited by Liana De Girolami Cheney, Washington, New Academia Publishing, 2014, 612 pp.; 82 b/w ills., $34.00; ISBN 9780991504770 The volume, dedicated to the memory of Professor Craig Hugh Smyth, aims to shed a new light on the figure of Agnolo Bronzino, an important artist at the court of Cosimo I de’ Medici, and his wealthy patrons. Thise wide collection of essays is a tribute to Craig Hugh Smyth (1915-2006), to whom Professor Liana De Girolami Cheney has dedicated a brief but accurate biographical profile. The brilliant director of Villa i Tatti from 1973 to1985, Smyth was one of the “Monument Men” after the Second World War.
    [Show full text]
  • Gallery Late Gothic & Renaissance Art in Italy, 1350-1550
    Gallery Late Gothic & Renaissance Art in Italy, 1350-1550 The art exhibited in this gallery originates from the leading artistic centers of Italy. The country was divided into a number of independently governed cities and states, an arrangement that favored a strong regional development of language, art, and culture. Art continued to be produced primarily in the service of the Catholic Church; however, patronage began to shift to wealthy families and individuals. Many of the early gold-ground paintings in this gallery are fragments, once part of larger altarpieces known as triptychs or polyptychs. Towards the end of the 15th century, these separate panels began to be joined into unified compositions. Episodes from the Bible, the Golden Legend (a 13th•century manual on the lives of the saints and Christian faith), and the Apocryphal texts provided artists with a rich array of subjects and events to document. Along with the important religious and social changes marking this period, the physical nature of painting underwent a major transformation. The use of oils and canvas supports eventually became widespread, largely replacing the egg tempera and gold-ground technique on wooden panels. Linked to these advances was the development of the printing press, leading to the broad dissemination of religious and political ideas, and greater accessibility to texts and images. The Docent Collections Handbook 2007 Edition Giovanni del Biondo Italian, active 1356, died 1399, active in Florence Madonna and Child with Saints Peter, Paul, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, and Two Angels, c. 1385-90 Tempera on panel Bequest of John Ringling, 1936, SN 6.a The Madonna and infant Jesus are surrounded by saints in a sacra conversazione, or sacred conversation.
    [Show full text]